Read The Dolphin in the Mirror Online
Authors: Diana Reiss
The Dolphin in the Mirror (43 page)
Vail, Courtney,
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Venezuela,
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videotaping,
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Vietnam War riverboats,
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,
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Virgin Islands,
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visual discrimination between white symbols experiement,
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–
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Von Economo neurons (VENs),
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–
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Von Osten, Wilhelm,
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Wanungamulangwa people (of Australia),
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,
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Washoe (female chimpanzee),
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Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society of the UK,
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Whale Dolphin Conservation Society,
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whales
beluga,
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brains and,
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deception in,
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intelligence of,
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Jones and,
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man-made passages and,
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New York Times
article on,
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See also
humpback whales; orcas; whaling
whaling
caregiving behavior of whales and,
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New York Times
article on,
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Sagan on,
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scientist-advocate role to stop,
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"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (Nagel),
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Whistled Languages
(Busnel),
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whistle languages,
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–
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,
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,
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,
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–
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,
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–
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,
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,
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,
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.
See also
distress calls
White, Thomas,
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Whiten, Andrew,
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,
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,
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,
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Wildlife Conservation Society,
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,
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,
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,
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Wilma (water buffalo),
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Wilson, E. O.,
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Wise, Steven,
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Woman the Gatherer model,
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–
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,
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(n)
Woodruff, Guy,
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World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA),
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,
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* Some years later, Stuart made the same "crazy" decision, and he is now a professor of neurobiology at Columbia University in New York.
***
* Plutarch, Greek moralist, recognized this selflessness in his treatise
On the Intelligence of Animals,
66
C.E.
, saying, "To the dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage."
***
* It was not just in such tales that civilized nations of the past manifested their connection with dolphins. In Greece, the courts of law were based in temples dedicated to the dolphin god. And in France, the title Dauphin (the dolphin) was bestowed on the heir to the French throne from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
***
* These days I tell my students when they begin their first observations, "Don't take anything. Don't take pencils and papers. I just want you to go out and I want you to sit there for a week. And I want you to just watch them. There's no pressure. Just watch and see what you're seeing. And then write up ideas that you have of what you've seen, what kind of behaviors you saw." I don't want to give them an ethogram; it would filter the information too much. I'm more interested in what they see for themselves.
***
* This was before the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which prohibited the capture of wild dolphins for private individuals.
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* When speaking of dolphins, people generally mean the bottlenose dolphin, because that is the species that's been the most popularized. In fact, there are more than thirty species of dolphin.
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* Three decades later, animals' attunement to human music became a subject of serious scientific study.
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* I tried to locate her later that year, but she had been moved to another aquarium in Europe, and no further information was available.
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* This experimental design was inspired by Sue Savage Rumbaugh and Duane Rumbaugh, who used keyboards to communicate with chimpanzees. For video of dolphins using keyboards, see
www.hmhbooks.com/dolphinmirror#keyboard
.
***
* Video of Pan first imitating the ball whistle can be found at
www.hmhbooks.com/dolphinmirror#whistle
.
***
* For video of Stormy's bubble ring play and other dolphins producing bubble rings, see
www.hmhbooks.com/dolphinmirror#bubble
.
***
* For video of dolphin mirror play, see
www.hmhbooks.com/dolphinmirror#mirror
.
***
* For video of Presley spinning and watching, see
www.hmhbooks.com/dolphinmirror#spinning
.
***
* This latter probably reflected much more what our ancestors' hunter-and-gatherer life was like, as in the !Kung San, of Botswana, until not so long ago. Women provided most of the dietary sustenance, the nuts and tubers, whereas the men only occasionally brought home some meat.
***
* Princeton biologist Alison Jolly had published similar ideas a decade earlier, but they didn't have the impact on thinking among psychologists and primatologists that Humphrey's paper did. See Alison Jolly, "Lemur Social Behavior and Primate Intelligence,"
Science
153 (1966): 501–6.
***
† This paper was written before the extent of dolphins' cognitive abilities was known.
***
* Alison Jolly had termed it the
social use of intelligence
.
***
* If you think this sounds complicated, it is. Think of your own social network. You have close friends; acquaintances whom you mingle with on occasion; friends of friends whom you may socialize with; parents of your children's schoolmates; professional affiliations that accomplish specific goals; reunions of organizations; and large familial gatherings. It takes a high level of cognition to keep track of and remember all one's social and familial affiliates.
***
* Interestingly, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) introduced this argument three centuries ago in his book
Leviathan
: "Whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc., and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasions."
***
† Theory of mind is a great deal more complex than this, of course, and includes the ability to know that another can have a belief about the world that is false.
***
* For video of wild dolphin behavior in Bimini, see
www.hmhbooks.com/dolphinmirror#wild
.
***
* Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape, was a diving partner and friend of Louie, and together they founded the Oceanic Preservation Society, in 2005. It was Clark to whom Louie referred when he said he had access to someone with as much money as any shah.
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* This was the basis of the Great Chain of Being, a conception of nature that went from the inanimate to the sublime, with man being just a little lower than the angels; it dominated Western thinking for centuries and its echoes linger still.